


Alliance

by ohmyfae



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Ganon Zelda and Link join up to fight an eldritch horror, M/M, Minor Violence, More character tags as they appear, Multi, There might be a little smut later on
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-01-06 18:51:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18394289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmyfae/pseuds/ohmyfae
Summary: On the run from an uprising in the heart of Hyrule, Zelda and Link head to Gerudo City, where they seek out the only man who could be behind the attack. But when they find him, they discover that Ganondorf isn't the dreadful figure they remember, and there's something far more sinister brewing--Something that will require all three of them to join together to fight it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This one has been in the works for a while!

The king of the desert is smaller than Zelda remembers. His braids are shot through with gold beads that clatter when he moves, and his shirt is threaded with swirling gold designs, a jungle of embroidery stitched into cream-colored linen. He looks like one of the statues lining the street, broad-shouldered and grim, and he blocks the open door of his house, silhouetted against the light. On either side of him, red clay fountains into arching gates, and buildings huddle close, pieced together by spindly ladders that cross roofs and crawl with ivy. 

Ganon drums his fingers on his hips, and nearly a dozen rings flash in the moonlight.

"No," he says.

At Zelda's elbow, Link, dressed in robin's egg blue that billows in the breeze, rolls his eyes so hard that it almost looks painful.

"The least you can do is listen to us," Zelda says. She feels like a sparrow next to Ganon's peacock, mud and clay clinging to her dress, her hair a frizzy mess of a braid tickling her back. 

"No," Ganondorf says again. His voice rises dangerously, and he coughs. "I'm not doing this. I have a good thing going here, and I'm not about to trash the city because you want to start a grudge fight--"

"Darling?"

Ganon freezes. 

_Darling?_ Link signs.

Ganon points at them. "Don't say a word," he hisses, and turns slightly, revealing a room gleaming with polished wood furniture and thick rugs. "It's nothing, Mother! Just the neighbor kids trying to sell something!"

"We wouldn't have come to you if you hadn't forced our hand," Zelda says, and Ganon actually flaps his hands at her, eyes wide.

"That sounds like a woman to me," the voice calls, and a woman nearly a foot taller than Ganon comes into view, red hair falling thick over her shoulders. She smiles, placing a hand on her hip. "And look here. It is."

"Lovely to meet you," Zelda says, and Ganon sputters as she reaches past him, holding out her hand. Ganon's mother takes it, smiling faintly, and eyes Link. Link bows. "We're friends of Ganon. Or we were, long ago. We've been, ah, in a bit of trouble, lately..."

Ganon's mother takes in Zelda's ruined gown, Link's impressive bruises, and the naked blade hanging from Link's hip. "And trouble hasn't followed you?"

"It has," Ganon says, as Zelda says, "Not exactly."

"You'd best come in," Ganon's mother says. "I'll make us something to drink, and you'll tell us all about it."

"Mother!" Ganon cries, outraged, but his mother shuts him down with such a stern, no-nonsense look that Zelda privately vows to master it herself, one day. She steps past Ganon, whose nostrils are flaring with each breath, and Link follows after her.

 _Thank you,_ he signs, and Ganon practically growls.

It isn't how Zelda expected their confrontation to go, to say the least. She expected someone older. Someone crueler, with the cold, hard look of a tyrant, flanked by guards--Not a young man hardly older than she is, sulking on a massive cushion with a cup of limeade while his mother sets a tray of fruit on the rug. 

_It's an illusion_ Link signs to Zelda. _He has to be behind it._

Ganon coughs, and Link looks up as Ganon's hands go through the motions, clumsy and a little slow. _No illusion,_ he signs. _Asshole._

 _Pig,_ Link signs back.

"Boys," Ganon's mother says, in a forbidding tone. "Yes, Ganon, I saw that. You know, I always wondered where he picked it up--I had to learn sign myself, since he used it when he was young. Did you teach him?" She asks, and tries to sign the last few words. Link smiles.

_Yes. That was me._

"I wish you hadn't taught him the curses, though," she admits. "My name is Riza. And you two are?"

Z...Zena," Zelda says, in the midst of pure, unadulterated panic. Ganon gives her a dry look. "And--"

Link slaps her arm lightly and signa the word _Rowan._

"Roan?" Riza asks.

_Close enough._

"You may have already guessed," Zelda says, watching Ganon out of the corner of her eye. "But we come from Hyrule. We worked in the palace, but in the uprising--"

"Uprising?" Riza nearly drops Zelda's drink, and Link lunges to catch it. 

"What uprising?" Ganon asks.

Zelda frowns. The piece of the triforce on her hand, covered by tan kid gloves, has always helped her detect a lie. It's caught Ganondorf in one more times than she can count, lending assurance to her intuition, guiding her through the first signs of danger on the horizon. It was the only reason she and Link had escaped the castle in time, but now, in the warmth of Ganon's family home, it doesn't so much as stir.

"You didn't know?" she asks.

Riza sits, a hand to her mouth. "You must be the first to arrive."

 _The soldiers had the head of a boar on their armor,_ Link signs, while Riza is distracted. Ganon's lips move, trying to track his movement.

"What about armor?" he asks.

Zelda pinches the bridge of her nose.

They came in the night. Human soldiers, smuggled into the castle in the chaos of a public viewing of the throne, tramping down the halls and ripping open doors, leaving Zelda's guards scrabbling on blood-slick marble. Link had killed the first of them to come through the cellar, where Zelda was trying to activate a hidden tunnel to the outer wall, and they'd seen the boar painted on his chest plate, red as blood and fixed in a feral snarl.

There were no moblins. No beasts. No shadows stretching to trip them, no magic to bind them. But there was something about the eyes of the dead man, the way they darted about even as his heart stopped beating and his limbs stopped twitching, and a voice that seemed to rise from his throat, moaning through gritted teeth.

 _Zelda,_ he'd said. _Zelda._

"We stole horses from the stables," Zelda says, "but we had to set them loose in the end. You're the only one we know outside of Hyrule, so we knew we had to get to Gerudo City..."

Ganon gives her a long, fixed stare. "So that's why you're here," he says.

"And the queen?" Riza asks. "Queen Zelda?"

"Dead," Zelda says. Ganon's brows lower. "I was... I was her maid."

"You poor things," Ganon's mother cries, and Zelda pushes her drink aside as she's pulled into a crushing embrace. A hand goes to her hair, stroking over the tangles, and Zelda realizes, with a jolt that threatens to shake apart the stubborn will that led them here, that the last time anyone held her like this, her father had been alive. She sucks in a sharp breath, and tries again to push all the fear and horror and misery of the past day into a tight knot in her belly, but it's too late, and she wraps her arms around her enemy's mother and cries into her bare shoulder.

Link places a hand on her back, and Zelda forces herself to draw away, taking long, steadying breaths. Riza is still holding her, a hand at the back of her head, and Ganon is sitting in shock on his cushion, staring at her like she's grown a second head.

"I've never seen you cry before," he says.

"Ganon!" Riza's voice is a bark. "Apologize."

"I--"

"It's alright," Zelda says, brushing her fingers under her eyes. "I was just overwhelmed. All the running; and we haven't even stopped to eat--"

"We can fix that," Riza says. She stands, towering over them. "Ganon, make them something substantial while I inform the Chieftain. If Hyrule has fallen, she needs to know. Can I trust you to be responsible?" she adds.

"Mother," Ganon says, in a low voice. "I've been a full member of the city for months, now."

His mother holds his cheek with a hand, and Link grins. "And I'm so proud of you," she says.

 _Darling,_ Link signs, hand splayed on his chest in an exaggerated, simpering gesture. Ganon's mouth twitches.

"You two can stay as long as you need to," Ganon's mother adds. "Ask my boy to make up the extra beds. I'll be back as soon as I can." She heads for the door, where a heavy spear leans against a potted plant, and hefts it in one hand before striding into the night.

Ganon, Zelda, and Link stare at each other in heavy silence.

"So," Zelda says. "It wasn't you, then."

 _It wasn't?_ Link asks, as Ganon says, "Of course it wasn't me!"

"He didn't know," Zelda tells Link, who still looks unconvinced. She takes a slice of melon and tries not to inhale it whole. "I'm certain."

"But you thought I did," Ganon says.

 _Because it's what you do,_ Link signs. 

"No, what I _do_ is guard the temple," Ganon says. "It's a good job. An honorable job. And it doesn't involve getting shot at by princesses."

_Queen._

"Oh, forgive me, your majesty," Ganon says, bowing at the waist. 

"I don't understand," Zelda says. "You've had no interest in the throne? None at all?"

"I like the desert," Ganon says. "There's power here--life isn't easy like it is in the fields--" He glances between Link and Zelda and scowls. "Yeah, fine, you've had it bad, but you came here to kill me."

"We did try to talk first."

Ganon eyes the fruit tray, which, despite Zelda's attempt at control, is almost decimated, and stands. "I'll get some hummus," he says, and walks towards a high arch a few yards away. Link stands as well, his sword banging on his thighs.

 _I'll make sure he doesn't poison it,_ he signs, and stalks after him.

Zelda watches them out of the corner of her eye as they jostle each other in the kitchen archway, but she's drawn to the paintings that line the walls, wedged between strips of ribbon and heavy wallpaper. They're commemorative pieces, cheaply made and painted over rough sketches, but she stops at a surprising likeness of Ganon, young and grinning as he spins in a gauzy robe, which sweeps around him like the wind. There's a headpiece shining in his hair, and there are other figures around him, blurred and indistinct, bending and twisting and leaping against the light desert sky.

"Oh no," Ganon says, and Zelda jumps, backing away from the painting. "Not that one."

"It's nice," Zelda says, and Ganon looks down at his hands, where bread, hummus, and squares of cheese are heaped on a plate. "I never saw you dance before."

"Ha, ha," Ganon says, and sets the plate down. "Tell me you aren't sticking around, at least."

 _We aren't,_ Link signs.

"I don't know." Zelda looks Ganon up and down. "If that wasn't you, that means someone's impersonating you. It's only a matter of time before someone else comes to the same conclusion."

"What happens to you shouldn't be my problem," Ganon says, but he keeps stealing quick glances at Zelda's red cheeks, and Zelda sits to take a piece of flatbread, ignoring his gaze. 

"It will be," Zelda says. She shoves an ungodly amount of hummus in her mouth. 

_So someone else will kill you,_ Link says. _Since we won't?_ He addresses the question to Zelda, who shrugs in a way that would have sent her tutors into a well-bred faint.

"No," she says. "We won't." She lifts her head and smiles at Ganon. "Because this problem belongs to all of us, now. And that means we'll be fixing it _together._ "


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience!

To his credit, Ganon doesn’t laugh. Link does, though—A loud, sputtering bark of horror—and he signs to Zelda using the rapid-fire half-signs and shortcuts that used to make other soldiers in the guard frown and squint. Ganon squints, too, leaning forward to watch the path of his hands and arms.

“Lips wrong?” he reads. “Sky? Hands broken?”

“He means he has sunstroke,” Zelda says. “So he must have read my lips wrong. _And_ I need to use my hands,” she adds, signing slowly for emphasis. Link’s still grinning, but his smile fades as Zelda repeats herself. “We need to fix this together. The three of us.”

“Whenever the _three of us_ get _together,_ ” Ganon says, rising to his feet, “I end up butchered like a pig.”

 _I wonder why,_ Link signs. He stands as well, his wiry form drowning in Ganon’s shadow. For a moment, Zelda remembers one of the worst days, the dark days, when the shadow looming over Link cast his lifeless body on the cobbles of Hyrule Town like so much chaff. Zelda had killed Ganon herself, dragging his bestial form to the street with Link’s sword wedged in his skull, blood fountaining over her hands. She was only thirteen. Link was ten. Maybe nine. She’d seen his parents, after, hovering on the edges of his funeral, small and drab and grey-faced, and swore that next time, she’d kill Ganondorf before Link even had a chance to remember. 

Zelda pushes down the sick, knotted feeling in her chest, but Ganon is watching her. 

“You don’t really want this, either,” he says. His voice is flat, inflectionless. “Go back to Hyrule. Or go to the Zora—They’re always willing to bend over backwards for the chosen ones. Just leave me out of it.”

 _Then stay out of it,_ Link signs. 

“You’re the ones who invaded my house!”

_How many times did you invade Hyrule?_

“Link,” Zelda says, and Link steps back, out from where he’s planted himself directly under Ganon’s nose. He props a hand on the hilt of his sword and swings on one heel, the image of a perfect soldier of Hyrule. Zelda stands and looks to Ganon, whose hands are trembling slightly. “I’ll return,” she says. 

“Don’t expect a warm welcome,” Ganon says, and Zelda gives him a sharp, brittle smile. He bows, and she nods her head slowly, the way she did once when Ganon came to her himself, promising contrition and a long-awaited treaty. He’d killed her mother two weeks later, and Zelda had shot him in the throat on his way down the stairs, his hands still dark with blood. 

“Good night, Ganondorf,” she says, and takes Link’s arm, letting him lead them both out the door and into the night. 

Link says nothing as they walk. He keeps his arm locked in hers, his other hand on his hilt, body pulled taut like a bowstring in a flawless parade posture. She can feel the fury building with every click of his heels on the sidewalk, and slips out of his hold just before he turns, his long hair falling in unruly lumps around his face. 

_What happened to you?_ he signs. His hands move sharply, forcefully, with none of the exaggerated gestures that are Link’s version of a drawl. _Do you know how many times he’s killed you?_

“Yes,” she says, and switches to sign, too aware of the low buildings crowding in on either side. _I remember. While he was possessed by Demise._

 _Fuck Demise,_ Link says. His voice slips out as he signs, punctuating the force of his words. _They’re the same now. All of us are the same. You’re still the priestess. I’m still the knight. He’s still Demise. I don’t give a shit how much his mother loves him._

“Yes, you do,” Zelda says, with a fond smile. Link’s lips don’t even twitch. _You have to admit this is… different. He doesn’t feel the same._

 _There’s always something,_ Link says. _He tortures animals, or fights too rough, or he talks to himself._

 _Then we’ll follow him,_ Zelda says. _And if Demise isn’t there…_

Link doesn’t answer. He just sighs. “I know you’re tired,” Zelda says, and slings an arm around his shoulder. “We’ll find somewhere to sleep, and we’ll come back bright and early.”

Zelda stops them at the fringes of a night market, where she haggles off her bracelet at a clothing stall for a pair of outfits meant for more petite Gerudo women, which still end up just a little too long in the leg. They hide in a private garden, which has a winding path lined by poppies, fairy dusters and dandelions, and Link snaps his fingers for Zelda’s attention, drawing her to a low fountain. She shrugs her gown to her waist, and he wets his undershirt in the fountain, scrubbing off the grime of their trek into the desert. Zelda rolls her shoulders and leans into his touch. They only ever get to do this when they’re in danger, really. At home, where she’s Queen and he’s the captain of her guard, they risk soft smiles and short signs, keeping their public faces polite and professional. Link _has_ been a child of nobility in the past, but now he’s just a peasant boy, promoted too quickly and well-favored, and the last time they had a quiet night to themselves, he had to climb down to Zelda’s window from the roof. 

She nearly falls asleep on the edge of the fountain, lulled by his touch and the soft sound of the wind whistling over the wall. She climbs into her new clothes, which billow around her as she sinks to the cobbled path, and keeps her eyes open long enough to see Link, scarred and bruised and shadowed against the moonlight, stepping into the fountain. 

She wakes at dawn to the tickle of hay at her back. She rolls to the side, where she bumps into Link, who is rubbing a speck of dirt off the blade of his sword. He looks comfortable in the rolled-up pants and elaborate embroidery of a Gerudo, and he’s even finger-combed his hair and tied a veil over his forehead to stave off the sun. Shafts of light slide over him as he scrubs at his sword, and Zelda sits up, taking in the small, cramped stable loft where they’re sitting. 

“Carried you,” Link says. He doesn’t like to speak aloud—He can’t regulate the pitch and volume of his voice as well as he likes, and Zelda’s the only one who knows him well enough to understand him, so he must be too focused on his sword to bother to sign. “Your hair is a mess.”

“Thanks,” Zelda says, and signs, _Jerk._

He stops long enough to flash a one-handed _love you_ , then returns to his sword. Zelda runs her hands through her hair and winces as her fingers lock in a mass of tangles and hay. 

In the end, she ties her hair up and wraps it in a veil, which does a passable job, and cracks open the door to the stable. A dirt road winds past the abandoned, boarded-up house next to the stable, and steppes of dead weeds and wooden water troughs rising behind it hint at an old farm, lost to the desert. The city spreads out before her at her right, and she can just spot women climbing ladders over the roofs, carrying heavy baskets, wielding swords, chasing after their children. She wonders how the homes in Hyrule have fared. If the city is lost, a ruin abandoned by a careless, panicked Queen, swarmed by soldiers croaking her name. 

Link knocks on the door frame beside her. His sword is strapped to his hip again, and the veil is over his eyes, shielding him from the sun. His hair is down, curling at the edges, and he stamps his heavy boots in the dust. 

_Let’s stalk a pig, I guess,_ he says. 

The streets are still largely unused as they walk through the outskirts of the city, but locals start to slide down into the shade as the sun rises, bringing the heat of the desert with it. “He said he’s guarding a temple,” Zelda says, as a Gerudo jumps down a few feet away, making Link stiffen and reach for his sword. “It has to be an important one. The Spirit Temple, perhaps?”

 _Probably,_ Link says. _Convenient for him._

“I remember it used to be by a fortress,” Zelda says. “When I was Sheik… I used to come here…” She grabs a ladder and climbs halfway up, ignoring the stinging ache in her feet. “It’s all changed since then. Nothing looks like a fortress.”

 _Can’t see your lips,_ Link signs, and Zelda grimaces. _But we can ask someone. Say we’re pilgrims._

“Clever you,” Zelda says, mouthing the words, and he grins. He reaches out to catch her as she slides down the ladder, and they take off for the market. 

A woman selling honey cakes not only points them towards the temple, but offers them yesterday’s leftovers for half the price, and they share a sweet roll as they wind through the city, dodging scattered tourists from the valleys and Gerudo on their way to work. Zelda hesitates just a moment too long at the door of a salon, and Link has to drag her off, promising that he’ll find a proper brush later. 

“Oh, dear,” Zelda whispers, as they finally reach the steps of the temple. It’s been repurposed over the centuries, with new pillars and heavy fabric twisting and winding over the entrance, and a team of Gerudo guards stand at attention, their armor and spears more for the look of the thing than as actual deterrents. Tourists and pilgrims crowd at the door, jostling each other and shouting in a cacophonous din, and Zelda spots Ganon standing closest to the gate, dressed smartly in the same dark red uniform as the other guards. The only difference is a golden headpiece, the symbol of a future king of the Gerudo, which is fitted over his forehead and pokes out of his swirling braids. 

_He looks young,_ Link says, and Zelda frowns at him. _Didn’t notice before. How old, do you think?_

“Eighteen? You have to be grown to take on a proper job in the desert,” Zelda says. Link scoffs. 

_I was put to work at eight._

“When you should have been in school,” Zelda says, and Link rolls his eyes. “It’s true. Maybe the Gerudo have the right of it. But yes. It’s strange, him being so… well. We’re never very close in age, are we?”

 _I think he was a kid once,_ Link says. _I was nine, and he was this huge black piglet running through the streets._

“Piglet?” Zelda steps back. “But he was… He looked like a monster.”

 _Farm boy,_ Link signs. _Piglet, definitely._

Zelda looks up at Ganon, resplendent in his new uniform, and feels a drop of unease settle in her stomach. “That must have been horrible.”

_Yeah, it was._

Zelda thinks of the blood spilling over the stone, and touches the back of her hand, feeling for the warmth of her piece of the Triforce. It pulses at the touch, and as the light of it shows through her skin, Ganon’s head snaps up like a marionette on a string. 

Link grabs Zelda’s shoulder, but it’s too late. Ganon is already abandoning his post, leaving a line of scandalized guards behind as he strides towards them, hand wrapped around the grip of his ceremonial spear.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note: I always take a bit of an issue with fantasy universes where everyone in a group of people are cis women or all of them are cis men, and there isn't a trans or nonbinary person in sight. It just doesn't seem plausible, and has some worrying implications. Soooo Ganon _isn't_ the only man in the Gerudo, because come on. Come _on._
> 
> And I've always liked the idea of gender sort of going fluid when a person has been reincarnated over and over for centuries. The main trio have had a ton of different bodies over the years. Zelda's fine with being a woman right now, but it doesn't mean she's always been one or always will be one.

The sound of Link’s blade coming free of his belt is like a hiss of indrawn breath, and the cry of the crowd at the temple steps rises in a great shout that trembles in the air. Ganon reels back, brows raised, as the guards at the temple gate race down the steps, silent and swift as birds darting through the crowd. Zelda ducks under Link’s arm and grabs his sword hilt with both hands, dragging it down, but it’s too late—The guards’ spears pen them in, trapping them in a loose circle. Ganon stands just outside, his gaze fixed on Link’s blade, and lowers his spear.

“Hand over your weapon,” a guard says. She wears a symbol of the sun on her shoulder, and her uniform has a different cut than the others, more angular and sharp. The others look to her, moving a step behind her as she closes in.

“It’s them,” someone from the crowd says, and Zelda glances to the side, where a group of onlookers are staring at her right hand in horror. She smacks her hand over the light of the Triforce, but the crowd is murmuring, whispers swelling like a tide. 

“In public? They’d kill him in _public?_ ”

“You know what they did to him last time. Did you see the mural in the plaza?”

“They’re no match for them,” a girl says. “I heard she shoots lightning from her _hands._ ”

The guards shift uneasily, spears bobbing around them. “He raised his sword in self-defense,” Zelda says, and the guard in the uniform arches a brow. 

“We know what you are,” she says. “Drop your sword, and we’ll make it swift.”

“Wait,” Ganon says, as Link wraps an arm around Zelda’s waist, drawing her in. 

“Secure the prince,” the guard says, without so much as a look behind her. 

“My son told you to wait,” a voice calls out, and Zelda taps Link’s shoulder, pointing towards a gap in the crowd. Riza appears between two guards, dressed in a magnificent blue dress with a long sash draped over her shoulder, diamonds hanging from her ears and nose. She gives Zelda a tight smile. “I am the mother of the prince, and he lives in my house. It is my right to condemn or pardon his attackers.”

“Priestess,” the guard says. “With respect—”

“I’m glad to hear that you still respect my authority, Tas,” Riza says, and the guard flushes red. “The cycle is in motion. There is nothing we can do to stop it—The tide has come in. It is useless to swim against it. You understand me, don’t you, Tas?”

The guard stares at her for a long, silent moment, then steps back, raising her spear. The other guards raise theirs slowly, and two of them grab Ganon by the shoulders, trying to hustle him into the crowd. 

Riza looks at Zelda, and there’s none of the warmth and humor she’d shown the night before. “You’ll come with me,” she says. “It’s time you knew the truth.”

Link carefully lowers his sword, but he doesn’t sheathe it, and none of the guards approach to take it from his hand. Riza beckons, and they follow her through a hushed crowd, which shies away from their approach, minnows avoiding the path of an oncoming shark. 

_They’re frightened of us,_ Zelda signs, and Link nods shortly. 

_Propaganda,_ he spells, using his right hand. They don’t see Ganon as they ascend the wide steps. It’s as though he’s been swallowed by the crowd, spirited away to some safe corner where no Hylian can find him, and Zelda takes an unsteady breath as they enter the cool shadows of the temple. 

“So you weren’t the queen’s maid, then,” Riza says, and Zelda clenches her jaw. 

“It wasn’t safe to say,” she says. “Priestess Riza. I know you said that it’s time, but Ganon is your son. Why would you—”

“I am a priestess of the Spirit Temple,” Riza says. She places a palm on a door, which glows with faint blue light. It slides open, rising into the ceiling, and she gives Zelda a cool, dispassionate look. “Do you think I haven’t visited the archives? Do you think I’ve raised my son with my eyes closed and my ears…” she glances at Link, then turns aside. “Follow me.”

“I always knew my boy was special,” Riza says, leading them down a low-roofed, winding hallway. She stoops, her hair just brushing the stone ceiling. “All boys are in the Gerudo. We have a festival every time one comes out, but you’re barbarians, so you wouldn’t know, would you? When a boy is thought to be a girl-child, and tells us otherwise, we have a ceremony—“

“I know,” Zelda says, and Riza gives her a sharp look. “I had one myself.”

“Did you?” Riza eyes her closely.

“It was... a long time ago,” Zelda says. Zelda was a stranger in the desert, but Sheik had been welcomed as a long-lost son—He’d been happy there, or as happy as a man could be under the rule of Ganondorf, and there were others, Gerudo men who laughed as they were lifted high on the shoulders of their sisters, wreathed in flowers and gold. Now and then, the memory is too strong to ignore, and for a time, there is no princess of Hyrule. 

“It must be strange,” Riza says at last. “Having all those lives inside you. But my boy... I named him Ganon, after the king. Many of our men name themselves that, hoping they’ll be the next in line. But my boy was born on the late king’s hundredth birthday, so unless another announces himself...” She reaches a large wooden door, and pulls out a thick key. “But I saw something, when he was a child. In his crib. A shadow.”

Zelda reaches for Link’s arm, and he touches the small of her back. Here it is, then. The truth. 

“I knew what I had to do,” Riza says. She turns the door handle, and it creaks open, grinding on the stone. “And now you’re here. You have a right to see what’s behind this door.”

She gestures, and Link steps inside, leading Zelda by the hand. They cross the doorway, and a blast of heat swells in their faces, the breath of a massive bellows brought to life. Zelda blinks in the sweltering air, and her hand burns with the light of the Triforce, but she doesn’t have time to speak before the door slams shut behind her.

“You won’t hurt him,” Riza says. Her voice is muffled through the thick door. Above them, Zelda can see the shifting of creatures skittering over the ceiling, drawn to the sound, light shimmering over their beetle-like carapaces. Lava stirs around them, and there’s a sulfurous taste to the air, stinging her eyes and burning her throat. “I won’t let you hunt him down. Not this time. Not again.”

Zelda calls on a shield of light, arcing over the tip of Link’s outstretched sword, just as the first creature drops from the ceiling, claws unsheathed for the kill.

—

 

The first time Ganon sees a Hylian in his new life, he is five years old. 

It’s a beautiful winter day in the city, and the market stalls are stacked high with dried fruit from the plains. His aunties have given him a necklace for his birthday, and he plays with it as his mother, dressed in her temple finest, speaks with the fruit stall vendor for what feels like the third hour straight. Market days are always boring. He’d much rather be with his cousins, scouring the rooftops for cats to befriend and throwing rocks from the old aqueducts, but he isn’t big enough yet, and his mother doesn’t like him to wander. 

Then he sees them. They probably used to be pale, pale as the peachy white sand of the temple, but their skin has broken out in big red patches, and their hair is a strange, straw-like yellow. They look familiar, somehow. He inches towards them, peering up into their narrow faces, and one of them gives him a small half-wave. Then his mother sees them, and her grip tightens on Ganon’s hand. 

“Baby,” she says. The fear that tightens her voice makes Ganon’s throat constrict, and he remembers where he’s seen them before. They look like the ghosts in his nightmares. The wraiths. The shining girl and the grim-faced boy, who bear down on him night after night, tearing into him, ripping him apart until he wakes to his mother holding him to her chest, whispering softly in his ear.

“They’re too tall,” he says, but his mom doesn’t listen. She scoops him in her arms, nevermind that he’s too big for that now, and runs with him through the market, leaving her basket full of bread and fruit and eggs behind. They hide in a doorway, Ganon wrapped tight in his mother’s arms, and he feels her chest rise and fall, rise and fall, frantic and far too fast. 

When they finally make it home, Ganon’s mother jams a chair under the door, locks the windows, and brings down her girlfriend’s sword from the mantlepiece. She sits at the door of Ganon’s bedroom, where he lies in bed, a stuffed cucco in his lap.

“Baby,” she says at last, and Ganon looks up. Her eyes are bright in the light of his bedside lamp. “Promise me something.”

“Okay.”

“If you see people who look like the ghosts in your dreams, I want you to run. Run as fast as you can. All the way to the temple. Can you do that? And you’ll tell the captain of the guard that the tide has come in.”

“The tide’s come in,” Ganon says, and his mother nods. The blade shines where it rests on her knees.

“Good boy,” she says. She stands, and leans down to kiss Ganon’s forehead. “They’re nightmares, baby. And what does Mama do with nightmares?”

“Gets them,” Ganon says, with a small smile. His mother smiles back, baring her teeth. 

“That’s right. She always will.”

Thirteen years later, Ganon pushes free of the gaggle of guards trying to shove him behind the temple stables. His braids are disheveled, slipping from their pins, and his newly polished boots are caked with dirt, but he doesn’t look down as he charges up the steps of the temple. He’s a son of the Gerudo. A chosen man. The first prince, unchallenged. Even his mother can’t deny him now, and he has a right to speak to Link and Zelda directly. 

What were they thinking, drawing a sword at the steps of the Spirit Temple? Were they trying to make a statement? Probably not—Knowing Link, he thought Ganon was going to run him through. 

Which he should. He has a right to. They’ve been hounding him for centuries, haven’t they? And it isn’t as though he planned whatever happened in Hyrule. He doesn’t _have_ plans for Hyrule, not anymore. The plains may as well be cursed. There’s enough power in the desert, in the people who have build a civilization on the edge of the wastes, who have been challenged and overthrown and beaten down, but hold on to what they have and make something beautiful out of it. That’s power. Not being butchered in a city square, or stabbed in a field, or cast into fire. 

There’s nothing shameful in wanting this. Nothing dark. Ganon’s nightmares have never been of a great beast urging him to march on the valleys and mountains—They’ve only been of Zelda, and Link, and the fear that consumed him as the darkness fled, leaving him mortal and weak and terrified. 

He spots his mother standing off to the side, speaking to Captain Tas, and makes a beeline for them. Then stops, rocking on his heels, as his mother’s voice winds through the still air. 

“I locked the door behind them,” she says. Her hands are shaking, and her head is bowed. “I know I had to, but… I heard one of them shouting through the door, and I—”

“You’re protecting him,” Tas says. She takes Ganon’s mother by the shoulders. “You did what any mother would do. Better our hands be stained than his.”

Ganon’s stomach drops. The door. There’s only one door she could be talking about—The door to the old temple, the one that fell to fire centuries ago, the one that shudders and shakes as the creatures within try to eat away at the stone around it. He thinks of Zelda, crying in his mother’s arms the night before, and takes a step back, into the shadow of a pillar. 

“We would have done it already,” Tas says. “If they hadn’t left your house.”

“I wasn’t sure it was them,” his mother says. “Gods, they’re...”

“You did the right thing,” Tas says, but Ganon is already gone, slipping into the open entranceway to the low, narrow hall where the door is waiting. Heat rises in the air as he walks, frizzing his hair, and he crouches at the door, which holds fast against the ruin of the old temple. 

There’s nothing else for it. He won’t let the Hylians turn his mother into a murderer. He touches the back of his hand, feeling the thrum of the Triforce beneath, and kicks the door off its hinges, splintering it into shards of crumbling stone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If he has the Triforce of Power, why isn't he remotely possessed at this point? Hmmm! :3 :3 :3 :3


	4. Chapter 4

It’s the heat that hits him first. Clouds of sulfur, mingling with the brittle tang of carbon, burst from holes in the floor on either side of a high platform, which is littered with the shells of dead fire beetles. Ganon kicks a dead beetle aside, and when it crunches to the ground below, the air flickers. The room fills with lava, thick and swirling in unnatural eddies—Then it flickers again, and the illusion is gone. A clever piece of magic, Ganon thinks, as he climbs down off the platform, but not a successful deterrent for anyone brave enough to risk a tumble over the side. He weaves around the geysers, lifting his shirt over his nose and mouth, and grips his useless spear. There are more dead beetles here, forming a haphazard path to a set of rough steps descending into a dark, damp tunnel that smells of mold and moss. Ganon sighs and twists his hand. A string of light unfurls from his palm, wriggling down the tunnel like an enthusiastic snake.

Magic comes easy to him. Most things do, in this life. Sure, his mother hired him tutors, but Ganon learned how to play the piano five hundred years ago, and trifles like dancing, racing, and fighting have always been a matter of making his body catch up with the rest of him. He was the bane of his magic instructor and a headache to a long line of teachers in his public school, a child who corrected history professors and traced magic runes with a gesture. Still, no one has ever been as frustrated with his magical talent than Zelda—Zelda the witch-queen, with her shields of light and her arrows that curve to the heart. Zelda, swinging through the air by his own power, raising a sword against Link even as her cold, dead eyes flutter shut. 

He wonders, as he tramps down the stairs, if she also knows how to make a string of lights that don’t die when she stops watching them. If she’s ever made roses grow out of season, or rain clouds shunt across the sky. Maybe if she learned how to _play_ with her magic, she wouldn’t be here. _Ganon_ wouldn’t be here, slipping on a patch of smooth stone and staggering into a round chamber, framed on all sides by doors barred with ice, fire, and lightning. A trio of armored Stalfos lurch in the center of the chamber, flanking two figures dressed in garish clothes that went out of style two seasons ago.

Ah.

Ganon pauses in the doorway, still hidden by the shadow of the tunnel, and watches as Link sweeps under one of the Stalfos’ blades. He swings Zelda under his legs, and she wraps a whip of light around the Stalfos’ ankle. It looks down, momentarily distracted, and Zelda weaves the light through the stone like thread through a cloth. The line goes taut, and the Stalfos stumbles, nearly impaling itself on Link’s blade.

“And they said embroidery was a useless art,” Zelda says, but Link is too busy wrenching his sword out of the Stalfos’ ribcage. It’s jammed tight, and despite the hissing rattle that is a Stalfos death cry, it doesn’t budge. Zelda licks her fingers and pinches the thread of light, eyeing the two Stalfos approaching Link, but Ganon’s seen enough.

He plucks a hair from his uniform and twists it in his fingers. It spreads, bristles, and unfurls into an unsteady black smudge over his hand. A beak pushes out of the darkness, then the gloss of inky feathers, of claws that curl with wicked intent. The crow takes off, and a dozen, two dozen, three dozen crows emerge from the pulsing bulge of its neck. Zelda throws up a shield, but the remaining Stalfos, terrified of creatures that pluck at the bones of the dead, shudder and clack in their rusting armor.

Before Ganon can emerge from the shadows, Link has pulled out his sword at last, and he throws himself on the terrified Stalfos with a guttural shout. He may be a knight, but he fights like an animal when there’s no one but the three of them to witness it. It’s a scene out of Ganon’s nightmares; bones cracking, armor plating dropping to the earth, bare hands ripping apart the last Stalfos’ jaw with a sickening snap.

He almost prefers Link like this. This is the true Hero of Time, stripped bare of pretense and Hylian etiquette, desperately clawing against the rising sands of his own mortality.

Ganon’s crows dissipate, and Zelda stands, shaking tangled hair out of her eyes.

“Gave up on the door, did you?” Ganon asks.

Link turns his wild eyes Ganon’s way, and Zelda rushes between them, hand upraised. For a moment, there’s just the sound of Link’s ragged breathing, a snarl rising in his throat at every inhale. Zelda touches his chest, her fingers just resting on his bare skin, and he bites his lip hard enough to draw blood. It’s what he needs. Ganon’s felt it himself, the aborted thrill of a fight ended too soon, the taste of copper on his tongue.

“I’m not here to kill you,” Ganon says. The air still ripples in the heat, so he signs slowly, drawing out his gestures. “But only because it would haunt my mother if you died here. She has one life—I’m not about to let you ruin it.”

Link tucks his sword under one arm and makes a jerky sign. _Noble of you._

“I try.” He jerks his head to the tunnel at his back. “Let’s go.”

“No, thank you,” Zelda says, with that small, knowing smile that always makes Ganon’s hackles rise. Once, when he was new to the world and not yet wary enough to survive, he’d thought her smile pleasant. Guileless. Now, he knows better. Soon enough, she’ll be laughing—A small, silent chuckle hidden behind her fist—

Zelda raises a hand to her mouth. Link sucks at his broken lip, which is bleeding sluggishly, and the bones at his feet start to stir. “Your mother said something before she introduced us to the, mm, rustic inner workings of the temple,” Zelda says. She kicks one of the Stalfos’ skulls into the door laced with lightning, and the bones stop trembling. “Oddly enough, I don’t think she was lying. There _is_ something here. Something new. We’re going to find out what it is.”

“No,” Ganon says. He steps forward, and Link brings up his sword, his grip steady. “You’re going back if I have to drag you there.”

“I believe it has something to do with you,” Zelda says, in a distant, idle voice. She rocks on her heels like an indecisive child, and uses those maddening half-signs, the ones with too many gaps and hidden meanings to follow. “Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know why you haven’t gone, well…”

 _Total dick,_ Link signs. Ganon narrows his eyes.

“Crude, but apt,” Zelda says. “Regardless, we’re going to find out. And if we do happen to perish on the way, I suppose you can tell your mother we were alive before you fled.”

“You’re not going to _goad_ me into—“

“I think it’s this way,” Zelda says, reaching for the door made of fire. Ganon chokes down a growl, stomps over, and lifts her off the ground by her shoulders. Link’s sword whistles through the air, but Ganon just plops Zelda down in front of the barrier of ice. 

“Dead end,” Ganon says, jerking his head at the fire. “No ventilation in that tunnel.”

“Oh, really?” Zelda leans against the ice, which starts to melt on contact with her skin. “Thank goodness you’re here to—“

“No,” Ganon says, and her smile broadens. “Don’t. Don’t say a word. Stop that.”

Zelda tilts her head slightly. Ganon’s lips curl back, and Link carefully slips in front of him, holding a piece of Stalfos armor like a shield. Zelda holds the edge of the shield as though it’s the arm of a prince, and primly steps over the remaining lump of ice on the floor.

“Tell your mother you tried,” she says, and Link follows her, creeping backwards down the hallway.

Ganon throws his hands up in a silent curse to the gods and marches after them.

It’s too dark to sign, but Ganon can just see Link tapping his makeshift shield in a deliberate, stuttering rhythm. “Oh, yes,” Zelda says. She makes a shape in the air, and a cluster of crystals form around her hand, taking the shape of a loose circle. She raises her hand like a torch, and down the tunnel, over a dozen small, glimmering lights wink back.

Mirrors line the next cavern, which is roughly-hewn from the stone of the temple. Zelda’s light bobs as she walks, but there are no reflections of her or Link. She turns, lips parted, and for a moment, there’s something of Link’s battle fever in her eyes.

“It’s a puzzle,” she says. “One of these mirrors must be a door.”

Link readies his sword, and both Zelda and Ganon sigh.

“Not that kind of puzzle, hero,” Ganon says. He can feel the magic in the air, even from the tunnel, and when he steps into the cavern, a multitude of Ganons appear in the mirrors on the wall.

There are too many to count, and he knows all of them. A child in the black robe of a cult leader. A young woman with her hair piled high, a blade on her hip. A man with impossibly broad shoulders, a gasping, wheezing middle-aged man with a gash in his throat, a man in chains…

“I don’t remember that one,” Zelda says, reaching out to the chained man. Ganon winces, and the man cowers back, dragging at the iron. 

“They thought they could contain me,” Ganon says. He walks to the center of the chamber, and his past selves watch him, their eyes hungry and bright. “You met me in another form.”

“So you’re the key to the door, then,” Zelda says, breezing over the memory of hunger, of the reek of sweat and molding stone, of a fury clawing its way through his body inch by inch. “Perhaps you have to find the right one.”

“None of them are right,” Ganon says. Link taps on one of the mirrors with the hilt of his sword, and a small girl in robin’s egg blue hisses at him. “They’re not the ones standing here, wasting time.”

There’s a soft _click,_ and the stone under Ganon’s feet shifts by half an inch.

“Of course,” he says, and the floor opens up beneath them. 

Zelda casts a quick spell under her breath, but she doesn’t need to—They land together in a round, deep pool covered by a low dome. They flounder for a moment, since Ganon sinks like a stone and has to cling to the wall for support, and slowly drag themselves onto the ledge.

“That’s it,” Ganon says. “When I’ve brought you back to the surface, I will kill you _myself._ ”

Zelda translates for Link, who laughs. “He says that’ll be a change of pace,” she says, and Ganon gets up, passing a hand over his clothes. They dry instantly, and Zelda narrows her eyes.

“Never heard of a basic grooming spell, your majesty?” Ganon asks. Zelda mutters a curse under her breath. She and Link slosh after him as he leads the way to a raised platform, where a small depression in the center holds bits of dried herbs and long, worrying scratches in the stone. Ganon snaps a string of light into existence, and Zelda watches it twist towards the dip in the floor. 

_Human did this,_ Link signs, and runs a hand along one of the scratches. _Can you do the thing?_

“The thing?” Ganon asks.

Zelda runs her hands through her mess of damp hair for the third time that minute, and Ganon snaps his fingers. The tangles ease out of her hair, which falls soft and glossy on her shoulders.

“Oh,” she says. “I _felt_ that. Is it the sound that does it? I could—“

Link gestures, and Zelda follows him to the depression. “Fine. But I can’t make any promises. The thing,” she says, glancing at Ganon out of the corner of her eye, “is a vision. A glimpse into the past, or future.”

“You’re known for that,” Ganon says. Her smile goes brittle, and she closes her eyes, a hand hovering just over the stone. Her eyes fly open. Light blooms under her skin, highlighting every smudge on her cheek, every shadow under her eye. Then she rocks forward, and Link catches her, holding her to his chest. He flashes Ganon a baleful glare, but Ganon holds his hands up, palm out.

“I cast nothing,” he says.

Link jostles Zelda in his lap, and she grimaces, pinching the bridge of her nose. “A moment,” she says, and crawls off to the side to heave over her knees. Her skin is ashen in the glow of Ganon’s witch lights, and her pupils are blown, roving as though she’s still lost in a vision, seeing specters that aren’t there.

“Well?” Ganon asks, when her breathing has settled at last, and she’s back to nervously brushing at her hair. “What did you see?”

She turns, and her face is that of a ghost, drifting aimless through the dark.

“You,” she says. “I saw you. You’ve been here before.”


	5. Chapter 5

Not long ago, when Riza was a young woman in a rumpled acolyte’s robe and cheap sandals, a silvery ladder descended into the chamber where Zelda, Link, and Ganon now stand. In Zelda’s vision, the ladder swings faintly, and a woman with short red hair, dressed in a uniform almost identical to Ganon’s, tugs on it twice. 

“We have ten minutes before the priestess finds us,” the woman says. Her voice is warped in the vision, wavering in and out. “Do it quick.”

Riza lays a hand on the back of her infant son, who drools on her shoulder, wrapped in a white blanket with blue cuccos on the hem. She kneels on the dry stone floor, and bends down to examine the corpse in the center of the room.

The body was beautiful, once. Or someone had thought so—Gold and silver jewelry hang off fingers and wrists and clatter around in the sunken mess of its skull, and what clothes that haven’t rotted away are well-made. Riza makes a sign in the air, and Zelda, frozen in place over the pit where the corpse had been, wants to skitter away like a mouse in a hole.

No one should make that sign over the dead.

But Riza does, closing the circle of a binding spell that glows violet over the corpse’s crown, and the baby at her shoulder wakes, whimpering softly.

“It won’t take,” the other woman says. She holds the ladder tight, muscles bunching in her arms. 

“It will,” Riza says. “It wore this body once. It can wear it again.”

Light shines from her baby’s hand, and Riza holds him to her chest as the room fills with a swirling, seething, roaring darkness. It swallows their screams, drowns out the dot of light that is the Triforce of Power, and with one last, terrible cry of rage, sinks into the body beneath them. Bones rattle, jewelry clinks to the floor, and Riza sits on her heels, petting the back of young Ganon’s head.

“It’s over,” she says to the woman clinging to the ladder. Her cheeks are damp with tears. “He’s safe.”

 

\---

 

Zelda comes to with a jerk and flings herself out of Link’s arms. She retches over her knees for a moment— _Gods, they’ve been kneeling in a tomb_ —and touches her hair, trying to keep herself grounded in the present.

“Well?” Ganon asks. “What did you see?”

She turns to him, and regards the man the guards in the city above must have seen as they ran to his side—Young, awkward, just coming into his power, a protected son of the Gerudo. 

There’s a long silence when she’s done. Ganon sits at the base of the tomb and slowly cracks his knuckles, one by one, his face grim. Link climbs into the pit, and Zelda and Ganon both straighten, horrified, but he’s never been one to care much for propriety. He just grabs Ganon’s hand and presses down over the barely-visible line of the Triforce. It’s the first time in over three hundred years that he’s touched Ganon without the intent to kill, and Zelda doesn’t miss the way Ganon’s eyes go wide with a sudden flash of fear.

 _Demise claims Power,_ Link signs, when Ganon jerks his hand away. _If he’s gone, this should be gone, too. And his memories._

Zelda regrets the words before they even come. “Or it’s his host who has Power, and Demise is drawn to him.”

Ganon pops a knuckle, and Link pulls himself out of the pit. 

_The body?_

“Sounds like one of mine,” Ganon says. He finally breaks Zelda’s gaze. “But it’s not here anymore.”

“And someone just invaded Hyrule,” Zelda says. 

_Skeletons don’t just crawl away,_ Link says. _Magic. He forced a vision._

“It was real,” Zelda says, just as Ganon says, “You fought skeletons fifteen minutes ago.”

 _Then what is he?_ Link asks. _If he isn’t Demise in hiding, what is he?_

Ganon stares at him.

_The gods would’ve done something. They wouldn’t let some punk mama’s boy—_

“Hold on,” Ganon says, his lips moving as he translates. “A punk wh—“

Link slaps his wrist. _They would’ve separated them. It makes no sense._

“It might,” Zelda says.

“Bodies are limited,” Ganon says, in a distant voice, as though they’re in a nice, quiet sitting room talking about someone else. “Put something with that much magic in a host, and sure, the host changes, but they restrict what the magic can do.”

“So you hobbled him,” Zelda says.

“Lucky me.” He pops another knuckle. “I could’ve told you, you know. If you asked.”

Zelda stands, turning away from the pit. “We thought Demise was lying dormant in your body. That you were a vessel for him to possess.”

“Is that how you see your own body, priestess?” Ganon asks. He pushes a loose braid over his shoulder. 

_That’s how it’s always been,_ Link signs, before Zelda can protest. _We’re here because we have to be. Our bodies are just waiting for us to remember._

Zelda looks at him, lips parted in alarm, but Link’s eyes are dull and expressionless in the gloom.

“That’s a depressing way to live,” Ganon says. He gets up, and the lights follow him, twisting towards the ceiling. “You said there was a ladder here?” He raises his hands, and a pair of magical, semi-transparent arms form around them, extending to the roof of the cave. Dust falls in a great cloud, and a faint ray of light shines down on Ganon’s face. He smiles slightly, luxuriating in the steady glow, and the crown at his brow gleams.

Behind him, Link’s face contorts with rage.

It’s gone in an instant, replaced with a smooth, almost bored look that slides past Zelda without pause, but she catches herself watching his sword, held loosely in a calloused hand, as Ganon busies himself with a levitation spell. 

“I can do that,” she says, and Ganon sighs, extending an arm. She steps close, and Link moves to intercept her, placing himself between her and Ganon. They stand together under the light at the roof of the tomb, and Zelda lays a hand on Link’s knuckles, pinning the sword to his side. 

They rise on a disc of wind, and emerge into an abandoned rock garden in the shadow of the temple. Link scrambles over the side of a crumbling well, and Ganon steps over _him,_ knocking Link’s chin on the stone. Link spits in the dust and reaches for Ganon’s belt, but Ganon’s already out of reach, blinking hard in the light.

 _Go easy on him,_ Zelda signs, sitting on the lip of the well. _He’s just a mortal._

Link drops down from the well, and rocks slide under his boots. _Wonder what that’s like._

“But you do know,” Zelda says, and Ganon turns. “Out of all of us, you’re the only one who gets the chance to forget for a while. You can have a childhood.”

Link walks off before she can finish, deliberately ignoring her, and picks up a small, flat stone from the path. He skims it over the garden, dislodging debris and knocking a cactus out of its vase, and bends down for another.

“I’ll have to speak to my mother,” Ganon says. He rubs at his hand, watching Link throw a stone at a crumbling lantern.

“I’m sure you have questions,” Zelda says. Link makes to throw another stone, stops, and tries again. He’s like a puppet on a faulty clock, twisting through the same movements, unable to follow through.

“I’ll need her permission to leave, as well,” Ganon says. Zelda cranes her neck to look into his eyes. His gaze follows the swing of Link’s arm. “An uncrowned prince needs his mother’s blessing to go. But if Demise wants the Triforce, he’ll come for the Gerudo next.”

Zelda steps back to get a better look at him. “You don’t mean to say…”

“It’s that or watch Gerudo City burn. Again.” Ganon hooks his thumbs in his belt. “Better tell the hero.”

“Maybe I should,” Zelda says, as Link knocks the ear off a stone cherub. Ganon smiles a little, a sidelong smirk she hadn’t seen in centuries, and shrugs a shoulder.

“What’s he going to do, priestess?” he asks. “Kill me?”

 

—

 

Link clenches his hand around a stone and lets it fly, arcing towards a small bird fountain ten yards away. It would be better with a sling—A traditional shepherd’s weapon, and Link has been a shepherd too many times to count—but a strong arm will have to do. He braces his feet on the pebbled ground and tries to ignore the tremor in the stones, the steady vibration of heavy footsteps.

A childhood. Oh, he had one. That was pretty much all he had, for a while. It’s all he ever has to give up, too; A sacrifice to the gods, a covenant formed in every closed door, every green cap passed from one hand to another, every lost sister and abandoned father and stone-faced mother. His latest parents knew what they had early on. They sent him to the fields when the dreams first started—No use going to school, not with the family sword in the basement and the green jacket on his mother’s sewing table—and Link had to figure out for himself why they stopped laughing at his jokes, why they avoided his gaze, why they didn’t even flinch when the princess came, following a vision to a small farm on the outskirts of Hyrule. It was almost a relief to remember, this time.

And now, it turns out Ganon isn’t _like_ the rest of them. He gets a real childhood, this time. Link has always been a cup meant to be emptied, a tool for the gods to wield, and he’s fine with that. He’s fine. But Ganon gets a mother who’s willing to force the gods’ destiny out of him, a country willing to protect him, while Link gets a soft goodbye and a sword. 

A shadow crosses his, and Link whirls on the ball of one foot. Ganon stands before him, his long braids falling loose, shoulders bowed, his face troubled. Link wonders if this is how _he_ looks every time he remembers.

 _I have bad news,_ he signs. _I’m coming with you._

Link snorts and raises his hands in defeat. _Sure. Why not._

 _I forget, too,_ Ganon says. _Sometimes. Before Demise wakes. Got to thirty, once. Got married, had a daughter. Sweet thing._

 _I never had kids,_ Link says. Even when he lived, when Zelda brought up the possibility, he always backed off. He didn’t want her heirs getting tangled up with his, and he usually had a sister or a cousin running about, carrying on the family line. _What was her name?._

_Meera. Made it to about yea high._

Oh.

They stand in silence for a while, safe in the shadow of the temple. Link looks at Zelda in her damp clothes and magically dry hair, and wrenches his gaze away. This will be another sacrifice, in the end.

 _So it’s a truce,_ he says. Ganon nods. _Fine. We’ll do it._ He adjusts the sword at his belt and shakes damp hair from his eyes. _Now you get to see how the other side lives, I guess._

“I’m overcome with anticipation,” Ganon says, stumbling through the signs. Link lets out a bark of laughter, and Ganon’s eyes widen. 

_Don’t do that,_ Link signs, as Zelda looks their way, mouth open.

_Make you laugh?_

Link flaps a hand at him. _This is a survival situation. We aren’t friends._

“Perish the thought,” Ganon says, and, despite the unease twisting in his stomach and the fury simmering just below, threatening to choke him, Link almost risks a smile.


	6. Chapter 6

Once, when the plains and mountains of the world he knew descended under a cold, unending sea, Ganon scaled the tower of what had once been a submerged ruin. Steam rose in billowing clouds from the walls as the sun baked the stone, and when Ganon finally emerged through a trap door in the floor, he found the pirate queen, Tetra, smearing thick makeup over her hands.

He’d looked up at the symbols of the royal family lining the walls, then down at the tearstained girl shaking with fury under a great glass mural of Hyrule Castle. “The king did this?” he asked. “Who locks his own daughter in the basement?”

Zelda—Tetra—had turned to him, then, her face a ruin. “He isn’t my father,” she said. “I never wanted this.”

 _I never wanted this,_ Ganon thinks now, looking over his shoulder at the long, sloping dunes that bleed into the fields of Hyrule. This will be an exile of his own making. He’s never been trapped, here. Never controlled. While the king threw a spell on Zelda to make her look like the child he used to have and pushed her in a vault for safekeeping, Ganon’s mother defied the gods themselves to free him. 

When she brushes his hair from his eyes, her face pinched with worry, Ganon finds there isn’t much to forgive. Not after this. Flowers start to trickle down from the roofs and windows of the city square behind her, a last farewell to a favored son.

“Hey.” One of the younger sons of Hyrule, a distant cousin with short-cropped hair, taps him on the arm. He’s only an inch shorter than Ganon, and his smile is bright and wicked. “If you die out there, try and send back the crown for me, okay?”

“You’ll be the first to go when the revolution comes,” Ganon drawls, and his cousin laughs.

His mother kisses him on the cheek before he goes, and her hand tightens on his. “Watch them,” she whispers. “Come home.”

Ganon doesn’t trust himself to speak. He turns, shedding flowers, and walks down the clean-swept street towards the city gates, where his sometime-executioners are waiting.

 

\---

 

Link sits on the wall overlooking the city gates, one foot dangling over the edge, and closes his eyes. His chest is bared to the sun, and a blue robe billows at his back, more of a cape with the suggestion of sleeves than a proper shirt. Zelda twists his long hair in a braid, taking the time to run her fingers through the fine hairs at the back of his neck.

“If you were a cat, you’d be purring,” she says. Link, who can feel the vibration of her voice against his back, just raises a hand and lets it flop down again.

Below them, Ganon dusts flower petals off his hair. He’s decked out in a gold robe and a matching sunburst crown, and his ceremonial spear is gone, replaced by a new, practical one almost as tall as he is. His hair flows loose over his shoulders, and the crowd behind him clusters at the edge of the main street, watching him warily.

“Looks like you’re banned from the city,” he says.

“I had a feeling,” Zelda says. They’ve been stuck on the gates for an hour, waiting for Ganon to speak to his mother while a line of guards watched them, spears raised. They’re still watching, gazes flicking from Ganon and back again, but Link just blinks at them slowly and slithers cat-like off the wall. One of the guards jumps, and Link staggers, yawns, and gives them a cheery wave.

Two of the guards tentatively wave back before their neighbors hiss them into shamefaced silence.

“I’ll regret this,” Ganon says, as Zelda shifts closer to the edge of the wall. She judges her jump carefully, and both Ganon and Link rock forward a little as she rolls to the ground. Gerudo clothes are so much more practical than a queen’s gown—She wishes, a little wistfully, that she could change her wardrobe once or twice without causing a panic at court. It would make keeping up with Link that much easier.

“I thought you left regrets behind half a millennia ago,” she says, signing for Link’s benefit. Link bares his teeth in a grin. “Come. We ought to seek the sages. They can bless Link’s—“

“Same dance, different curtain,” Ganon says. Zelda skids to a halt in the tight-packed sand. “Bless his sword, stab the villain, lather, rinse, repeat. You want to do this again in another century?”

 _I missed half of that,_ Link signs. _He giving you trouble?_

“No,” Zelda says. “We aren’t doing this. Behave. And do you have any better plans?” She directs the last at Ganon, who raises his brows.

“Demise came from somewhere,” he says. “If we strike at the heart of him, he won’t come back. We just need to find where he’s drawing his power, if it isn’t from me.”

 _We tried that,_ Link says. _Found him at the bottom of a pit, the first time._

“Then that wasn’t the first time,” Ganon says. His sign comes out something like _Then bird not one,_ and Link squints, mouthing along. “He was being sealed then, too.”

“Maybe he isn’t supposed to be sealed,” Zelda says. The others stare at her. “Well? What was his original state, then? How was he formed? The goddesses had to make him, didn’t they?”

 _That would be an awkward family dinner,_ Link says. _So, Nayru, I made this thing, lord of all evil, should really shake things up—Oh, fuck! Throw it in the pit and try again!_

“He existed with them,” Ganon says. “Possibly. It’s hard to tell.”

Zelda examines him, standing there in the low wind of the desert. Every now and then, she sees a face like his, wandering the fields and towns of Hyrule. Old spirits in new bodies, dragged back just to give Zelda a word of advice or to guide Link to his chosen weapons. There’s always something mournful to their faces, pain too vague to be healed, festering far below. Part of her wants to smooth it away, to brush aside whatever ancient memory drags Ganon down and see what he could be without it, but she just clasps her hands and says nothing.

Ganon cocks a brow, and heat rushes to Zelda’s face. She turns on a heel. “Well,” she says, a little too brightly. “We can always do both. Search for Demise’s source of power _and_ build up Link’s arsenal.”

“While we stand pretty on the sidelines, I suppose,” Ganon says. For a moment, all she hears are shuffling feet in the sand, then Ganon says, “Excuse you. I’ll have you know I’m considered perfectly attractive in Gerudo cul… Not everyone likes them scrawny and half-wild, hero.”

“I said behave,” Zelda snaps, and Ganon laughs, a low rumble that seems to shake the very air. She shivers and strides forward, towards the distant haze of Lake Hylia on the horizon.

\---

They camp under a half circle of stones, made grey with a clinging vine that refuses to die in the relentless heat, and Link builds up a fire before the chill of a desert night truly sets in. Ganon sets up his bedroll a few yards away, just close enough to feel the heat of the flames, but far enough to make a point. He lies there, watching the stars come out one by one. This was what he liked the most, on those quiet nights when Demise let Ganon breathe for a minute, struggling free in a vast sea of fury. The stars, wheeling slowly overhead, flickering, winking out, lost behind the clouds and the haze of the moon. He takes a shaky breath, then another, wrenching off the memory of that weight at his back, pulling him down. There’s nothing to bind him, here.

Not yet.

He could run. No one would blame him. He could fortify Gerudo’s defenses, build them up as a last bulwark against the encroaching dark… but Demise would come, soon enough. And Ganon would kneel to him, in the end. As always. 

A clear note rings through the night, and Ganon sits up, blinking dully. Link sits on one of the stones, whistling the bars to one of Zelda’s spells. He’s had centuries to learn the feel of a perfect note, Ganon supposes, but even so, he looks almost unreal, silhouetted against the sky. His foot taps on the stone, and when Zelda climbs her way to the top, his teeth flash in the dark. Their shadows merge, and Ganon clicks his tongue. So. He’d always suspected they were lovers, but they’d never made it public, so he couldn’t be sure. He watches as Zelda slips back down, and tenses as she walks his way, her long hair unpinned and frizzy on her shoulders.

“No goodnight kiss for me, I’m afraid,” Ganon says. She stops, her face shadowed, and he hears a faint chuckle.

“No, I think not.” She has long legs for a Hylian, Ganon thinks, absurdly, as she eclipses the fire. He’d never noticed that before. But then, he’d never seen her in a nightdress before, standing over him against the stars. 

She crouches to her heels, ruining the image, and Ganon groans. He sits up and pats the empty spot on his bedroll, and she sits, folding her legs beneath her. “The hero’s starting to rub off on you,” he says. “Unless princesses have changed their standards of etiquette in the past few decades.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Zelda says. She tugs at her hair, which Ganon knows is a lost cause, and closes her eyes. 

“Don’t,” Ganon says. Her eyes flutter open.

“What?”

“You’re going to thank me,” Ganon says. “Or beg forgiveness, or try and get _me_ to beg forgiveness, I suppose. It doesn’t matter. We’d be apologizing back and forth for another hundred years at that rate.”

“Only if we meant it,” Zelda says. Ganon tries to read her face, but her eyes are dark, and it’s hard to tell. He grips her chin in his fingers and turns her face to the light, and Zelda stiffens.

“Sometimes I did,” he says. The memories tug at him, nausea stirring in his stomach, a sickening twist of the nerves. “What I used to be. Sometimes I meant it.”

“Do you regret it?” she asks. 

Ganon thinks of the first few times, when he would wake as though from a dream, and find himself retching helplessly, mulling over every sound of metal cleaving meat, every scream of horror, every gibbering, slavering demon that crawled at his beck and call. He remembers almost relishing the change from man to beast, the raw fear and rage he could finally give a voice to, the death he knew was coming. 

“I thought I left regrets behind half a millennia ago,” he says at last. “Haven’t you?”

Zelda jerks away, and reaches up to touch her chin, as though brushing away the heat of his finger. For a moment, she looks nothing like the ageless priestess Ganon knows, and he lifts his hand again. She blinks fast, pressing her parted lips into a line, and gets to her feet. 

“Good night, your highness,” she says, in a stiff, formal tone. Ganon bows his head in mock humility.

“Good night, princess.”

She backs away from him as one would from a snake in the dust, takes a deep breath, and darts for the fire. Ganon turns back to the stars, which welcome him back, drawing him into their vast, comforting silence.


End file.
